What Green Party votes stand for

A Personal View By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

In the face of not only BBC cenorship of the Green Party leader's involvement in last Thursday's 'leaders debate' but also BBC news broadcast non-reporting of the Green Party in daily broadcasts of 'what the main parties are doing in the run-up to Thursday's poll', I offer the following clues, some of which have clickable links to manifesto entries on the Green Party's website.

There are alternatives

 Margaret Thatcher's infamous saying, "There is No Alternative," gave her the nickname 'TINA'. Perhaps the BBC News editors should be described as Auntie TINAs?

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is non-party-political and contains members of various political parties and none. Outside of the options presented by the BBC as the only valid options, the main parties of interest to Kwug members seem to be TUSC (Trade Union & Socialist Coalition)(1) and the Green Party of England & Wales(2). Some Kwug members while being keen on TUSC advocate voting Labour as a lesser evil than letting in a party that promises or threatens '£12bn further [and unspecified] welfare cuts' even where Hampstead & Kilburn Green Party candidate is making an excellent stand and getting electoral support as a result. I disagree with that stand point, not only on the grounds of making a stand for Proportional Representation.

Green Party votes acknowledge the level of internal democratic process that has led to the formulation of a real alternative electoral platform and the elections of Green Party Members of the European Parliament, London Assembly Members and a Green Party MP.(3)

What Green Party votes stand for

No ifs, no buts, the Green Party stands for no benefit sanctions

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We have everything we need to build a fair economy: natural resources, skilled people, modern technology.

But the Westminster Establishment has built an unfair [economy] where those at the top gain while those at the bottom suffer.

We can transform our economy if we have the courage to challenge the vested interests and close the gap between the righ and the poor.

[Read on... ](4)

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We all want somewhere warm, safe and secure to call home.

But we have a housing crisis with soaring private rents while social housing is being sold off left, right and centre....

[Read more....](5)

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We have world class universities, brilliant teachers and talented students.

But by putting a price tag on education, running schools as businesses and making them exam factories we are wasting children's potential and stifling creativity....

[Read on]....(6)

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Outline continued on special blog page....

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Notes

(1) http://tusc2015.com/
(2) https://www.greenparty.org.uk/
(3) See 'What Difference Can a Green MP make?' short film accessed 4 May 2015 https://youtu.be/Uq31QIMjVtU
(4) https://www.greenparty.org.uk/we-stand-for/fair-economy.html
(5) https://www.greenparty.org.uk/we-stand-for/decent-homes.html
(6) https://www.greenparty.org.uk/we-stand-for/free-education.html

'Education' for politicians' peace of mind

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am a member of a political party that is standing in the 2015 UK General Election. Something that few of you will know is that from my 24th year and well into my 40's I was a great follower of the writings of American 19th Century 'transcendentalist' writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, even while Margaret Thatcher seemed to enjoy elaborating on his statement that "there is no such thing as society."(1) Yet I reckon that before the jingoism of the 'Falklands Factor' came to her electoral rescue Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would not have enjoyed the Emerson quotation I came across this morning by way of a youtube recording of a Noam Chomsky lecturer entitled Corporate Attack on Education.(2)

In about the opening ten minutes Chomsky cites Adam Smith's much neglected-by-capitalists'-spin views of the wealthy who control society - or at least like to believe they can control society while greed controls them.(3) And then around the 12 minute mark he presents an Emerson quotation that I could not initially recall having read before but is much easier to track down in print via a Yahoo! search these days than it is to track down the original hard copy books. Such Yahoo! searches are great aids to direct quotation by way of copy-and-paste into blog piece!(4)

And that quotation from the essay New England Reformers made me laugh so much that I want to share it with my readers, albeit in a slightly more expanded form than that used by Chomsky:

I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, "If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: "This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats."

— Copied and pasted from Wikiquote Ralph Waldo Emerson (5)

The essential trouble for those politicians is that while I am an adult with a learning difficulty that tends toward slowness in learning and internalising 'information', once I became a reader I was better positioned to become a self-directed learner, and not accept, say, BBC shortlists of which politicians are worth the public hearing.

Notes

(1) http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-nosociety.htm
(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbMP-cy1INA
(3) ibid.
(4) https://uk.yahoo.com/?p=us
(5) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

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Enduring sources of discipline vs sanctions

By Swheatie of the KUWG, with some help from American educator John Holt and from Lebanese artist, poet and writer Kahlil Gibran

"Work is love made visible."

— Kahlil Gibran, 'The Prophet'

"I want to combat the idea that any disciplined and demanding activity, above all music, can never grow out of love, joy, and free choice, but must be rooted in forced exposure, coercion, and threat [sanctions]. Most of what I have read about music education says this one way or another. The idea is not only mistaken, but dangerous; nothing is more certain to make most people ignore or even hate great music than trying to ram more and more of it down the throats of more and more children in compulsory classes and lessons. The idea is wrong in a larger sense; in the long run, love and joy are more enduring sources of discipline and commitment than any amount of bribe and threat, and it is only what C Wright Mills called the 'crackpot realism' of our times that keeps us from seeing, or even being willing to see, that this is so. [Swheatie's emphasis]"

— John Holt

As in music education, so in jobsearch and career building? Do those who are intent on issuing sanctions to benefit claimants really have any love for them?

"Gove + DWP set kids up for life of misery," says Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group Secretary

"Education Secretary Michael Gove's premature and relentless testing regime and the Department for Work & Pensions attacks on social security payments are setting children up for a life of misery," Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group Secretary Alan Wheatley said today.

"When the market rules people's lives and workers become commodities, the market also colonises children and their childhood," he said. "Testing is used to measure the value or otherwise of children rather than monitor the support they require. Against that backdrop, successive UK Governments have sided with turning children's impairments into disabilities as money spent per child to support their development is cut and misappropriated by channelling it into endless testing. A June 28, 2002  Times Educational Supplement article by Ted Wragg is aptly headed 'Humane rights of the tested'.

"The impact of cuts in poor families' income is recognised in a Kellogs televised commercial that pledges to give money to sponsor poor children's breakfasts when people buy a Kelloggs breakfast cereal. Cuts in housing and council tax benefits also lead to disruptions in  children's home life as councils such as LB Brent have become renowned for implementing central government cuts. At the same time, overseas millionaires leave UK properties unoccupied as gambling chips in a bid to increase house prices beyond the reach of even public service workers such as teachers."

Details of the London teachers' march can be found on the Camden Trades Council website. "It is great that the teachers unions are co-operating in strike action," Mr Wheatley said; "in that, they have a lot to teach the jobcentre unions." PCS Union members in jobcentres take far more industrial action than the more-short-term-contract GMB members in jobcentres, and this lack of joint working has led to apparent apathy of even PCS union members at Kilburn Jobcentre who have demonstrated great reluctance to so much as form a picket line on an official strike day.